VALLE VISTA: Bat flight is nightly show

This summerâs awful hot, humid weather did have a side benefit. It kept the nightly flight of clouds of migratory bats in Valle Vista entertaining spectators at the Fairview Avenue bridge overcrossing of the Bautista Creek flood-control channel.

San Juan Capistrano has its swallows. Hemet should be famous for bats. Imagine the influx of tourists to town if word spread about the nightly flight as clouds of bats head off into the sunset.

I enjoyed watching the bats that began their flight to hunt for bugs on Wednesday, Aug. 27. They departed from the bridge three minutes after sunset. They were right on schedule even though they lacked the prompting of digital watches and smart phones.

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The bats arrive at the bridge in the spring, quite literally hang out for the summer and then fly south when the weather turns slightly cooler. The Fairview Avenue bridge, which is north of Stetson Avenue in Valle Vista, is an ideal spot for the bats to summer. The bridge is in Valle Vistaâs gorgeous citrus belt in the San Jacinto Valley east of Hemet, a place where bugs they love to eat thrive.

The nocturnal bats snooze for the day and then flap out to hunt at dusk. Some nights, during summers when word of their flights spread, I have seen more than 20 people waiting for sunset and the flight of the bats. A pleasant time to witness natural phenomena is in the cool of an evening following a hot day. It also is an opportunity to chat with people fascinated by the flight from the bat bridge.

I recently was contacted by several readers who wondered if the bats still fly in the late summer. I posed the question on Facebook and quickly learned time remained to see the bat show.

âThere were thousands of them last night!â wrote Denise Leonard, of Valle Vista, on Aug. 27. âIt truly is an amazing sight to watch them fly off in swarms.â

K.C. Klug of Valle Vista confirmed they were present. âThey are and the bridge stinks more than ever,â he wrote. âThey come out of the bridge on Mayberry (Avenue) also. It stinks so bad you gag sometimes.â

I checked the time of sunset on the Hemetweather.com Web site, which is operated by Leonardâs husband, Robert Leonard. I arrived about 10 minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon of citrus trees. I began hearing a few bat squeaks from the bridge. When the sunsetâs vivid orange subsided to a blush pink, a few lead bats zipped into the sky from beneath the bridge. Soon, hundreds of bats at a time flew out, sort of like pepper falling from a shaker.

The bats were on their way for a night of hunting that helps keeps insects in the groves in check, which is a benefit to growers.

Their exit from the bridge lasted about 10 minutes. As usual, it was a great show.

Krystyna Holley, a nurse who lives near Hemet High School, was excited to take her children â" Jakob, age 6, and 12-year-old Katylynne â" to see the bats fly. She said they had seen a glimpse of the flight when they drove by the night before, scheduled an early dinner and set an alarm to announce the time to drive to the bridge. She likes to take her children to see interesting things in the San Jacinto Valley.

âIâve seen cars parked here and wondered what was going on,â she said.

Her kids clearly enjoyed their evening outing from home.

âItâs cool,â said Katylynne. âItâs interesting to see something you donât normally see every day.â

Do check them out. If the weather stays hot, they could be around for several weeks.

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